| Title: | Two (non-)islands in Slovenian : A study in experimental syntax |
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| Authors: | Stepanov, Arthur (Author)
Mušič, Manca (Author)
Stateva, Penka (Author) |
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| Files: | This document has no files. This document may have a phisical copy in the library of the organization, check the status via COBISS.  |
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| Language: | English |
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| Work type: | Not categorized (r6) |
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| Tipology: | 1.01 - Original Scientific Article |
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| Organization: | UNG - University of Nova Gorica |
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| Abstract: | There exists a controversy in the literature and among the speakers of Slovenian concerning the grammaticality of wh-island and subject island constructions in this language. We conducted an acceptability rating study of wh-islands and subject islands in Slovenian, using the factorial definition of island. This definition provides for a possibility to isolate a true island effect while controlling for two complexity factors that potentially interfere in speakers’ evaluation of the relevant sentences: the length of the respective movement dependency and the presence of an island structure itself. We found that (i) Slovenian speakers do judge the wh-island sentences worse than the respective controls, but the observed degradation cannot be attributed to a true island effect; (ii) subject extraction out of a wh-island leads to a so called reverse island effect whereby the acceptability is higher than expected even if the above two complexity factors are taken into consideration; and (iii) speakers are sensitive to the subject island effect, as predicted by the mainstream theories of syntactic locality. The results of our study contribute to establishing a solid empirical base for further theoretical investigations of the island effects and raise new questions about the role of processing factors in speakers’ evaluations of island constructions. |
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| Keywords: | syntactic island, experimental syntax, Subjacency, Empty Category Principle, Slovenian |
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| Year of publishing: | 2018 |
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| Number of pages: | 435-476 |
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| Numbering: | 56/3, 2018 |
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| COBISS_ID: | 5165819 |
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| URN: | URN:SI:UNG:REP:N6LDREJP |
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| DOI: | https://doi.org/10.1515/ling-2018-0002 |
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| License: | 
This work is available under this license: Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives 4.0 International |
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| Views: | 3374 |
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| Downloads: | 0 |
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| Categories: | Document is not linked to any category. |
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